In recent years, the development and deployment of inflow control devices (hereinafter (“ICD”) has yielded great results and significantly improved the horizontal well production and reserve recovery of existing hydrocarbon wells. For example, in a well producing from a number of separate hydrocarbon-bearing zones, one hydrocarbon-bearing zone may have a higher pressure than another hydrocarbon-bearing zone. Without proper management, the higher pressure hydrocarbon-bearing zone may produce into the lower pressure hydrocarbon-bearing zone rather than to the surface.
In horizontal wells lacking proper management, hydrocarbon-bearing zones near the “heel” of the well (closest to the vertical or near vertical part of the well) may begin to produce unwanted water or gas (referred to as water or gas coning) before those zones near the “toe” of the well (farthest away from the vertical or near vertical departure point) begin producing unwanted water or gas. Production of unwanted water or gas in any one of these hydrocarbon-bearing zones requires special interventions to stop its production. The implementation of ICD technology serves to regulate, or normalize, the overall draw-down pressure along the length of the horizontal wellbore, thereby reducing the inflow profile impairment between the heel and toe of the well.
The installation of ICDs along the length of a horizontal wellbore is typically permanent and is generally part of the initial wellbore completion in a newly drilled well. Technology today, however, provides no way to put an ICD in an existing well completion. Instead, a complete change in the wellbore completion (i.e., re-completion) may have to occur for the installation of an ICD—an undertaking that can prove to be very costly and time-consuming. Furthermore, re-completion operations, including ICD installation in an existing wellbore, would typically follow wellbore stimulation operations, such as fracing. As is well-known, fracing operations generally requires a separate run into the wellbore, thus also demanding a substantial amount of cost and time. Accordingly, the high cost of replacing an existing completion with a new completion integrated with ICD technology may severely prohibit ICD use in, e.g., existing horizontal wells.
There is a need, therefore, for a cost-efficient method of implementing ICD technology with wellbore stimulation operations for both new and existing wellbores, thereby obtaining a high-productivity ICD completion.